Interesting difference on my hardware between operating systems.

Message boards : Number crunching : Interesting difference on my hardware between operating systems.

Author	Message
Todd Madson Send message Joined: 4 Aug 99 Posts: 55 Credit: 15,890,153 RAC: 10,226	Message 1272593 - Posted: 18 Aug 2012, 16:27:58 UTC
	I have played around a bit with running Seti on my i7 based machine in both MacOS and Windows and experienced very interesting differences in terms of what the benchmarker found: Hardware: 2.8 ghz Intel Corei7, 16 megs PC1333 ram, ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512 megs video memory. Windows stats: Memory 16373.9 MB Cache 256 KB Measured floating point speed 2675.11 million ops/sec Measured integer speed 10577.69 million ops/sec MacOS stats: Memory 16384 MB Cache 976.56 KB Measured floating point speed 2968.24 million ops/sec Measured integer speed 4781.98 million ops/sec In looking at this purely black and white it implies windows mode is going to give me higher performance due to much more efficient integer speed but also on the Windows side I can use my Radeon 4850 to crunch milkyway @ home blocks (I can't seemingly crunch any seti units as the card may be too old to do anything on the seti side due to lack of OpenCL features). I also on the Mac side can't crunch anything using the video card due to lack of development for that feature on that platform. Thoughts? ____________
	ID: 1272593 ·

Claggy Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 5 Jul 99 Posts: 3363 Credit: 25,949,683 RAC: 1,140	Message 1272624 - Posted: 18 Aug 2012, 17:38:56 UTC - in response to Message 1272593.
	In looking at this purely black and white it implies windows mode is going to give me higher performance due to much more efficient integer speed but also on the Windows side I can use my Radeon 4850 to crunch milkyway @ home blocks (I can't seemingly crunch any seti units as the card may be too old to do anything on the seti side due to lack of OpenCL features). If you enable Astropulse_v6 work fetch in your preferences you should be able to run the new Stock ATI OpenCL Astropulse app, Claggy
	ID: 1272624 ·

arkayn Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 14 May 99 Posts: 3088 Credit: 40,266,650 RAC: 65,576	Message 1272649 - Posted: 18 Aug 2012, 19:03:29 UTC - in response to Message 1272624.
	In looking at this purely black and white it implies windows mode is going to give me higher performance due to much more efficient integer speed but also on the Windows side I can use my Radeon 4850 to crunch milkyway @ home blocks (I can't seemingly crunch any seti units as the card may be too old to do anything on the seti side due to lack of OpenCL features). If you enable Astropulse_v6 work fetch in your preferences you should be able to run the new Stock ATI OpenCL Astropulse app, Claggy On the Windows side for now. Eric is trying to build a Mac version at the moment. ____________
	ID: 1272649 ·

Richard Haselgrove Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 4 Jul 99 Posts: 7458 Credit: 39,646,671 RAC: 33,272	Message 1272716 - Posted: 18 Aug 2012, 20:29:17 UTC - in response to Message 1272593.
	In looking at this purely black and white it implies windows mode is going to give me higher performance due to much more efficient integer speed but also on the Windows side I can use my Radeon 4850 to crunch milkyway @ home blocks (I can't seemingly crunch any seti units as the card may be too old to do anything on the seti side due to lack of OpenCL features). I also on the Mac side can't crunch anything using the video card due to lack of development for that feature on that platform. Thoughts? Or it implies that BOINC's benchmarking code is less than 100% consistent cross-platform.
	ID: 1272716 ·

Ianab Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 11 Jun 08 Posts: 562 Credit: 9,101,186 RAC: 8,387	Message 1272762 - Posted: 18 Aug 2012, 23:44:38 UTC - in response to Message 1272716.
	Or it implies that BOINC's benchmarking code is more like a random number generator....
	ID: 1272762 ·

Ex Volunteer moderator Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 12 Mar 12 Posts: 2883 Credit: 1,158,649 RAC: 840	Message 1272804 - Posted: 19 Aug 2012, 4:08:32 UTC
	Yes I've been told by others that the benchmarking is more or less meaningless. the only way you can compare across platforms is to run both platforms for a period of time, and compare the cumulative results to one another. ____________ -Dave #2 3.2.0-33
	ID: 1272804 ·

Terror Australis Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 14 Feb 04 Posts: 1417 Credit: 181,682,169 RAC: 158,573	Message 1272827 - Posted: 19 Aug 2012, 6:06:31 UTC
	In Windows vs Linux testing I've done using the respective AKv8 CPU apps, given the same hardware I would say the difference in crunching time between any 2 OS's would only be a few percent. T.A.
	ID: 1272827 ·

ML1 Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 7123 Credit: 3,684,005 RAC: 968	Message 1273402 - Posted: 20 Aug 2012, 17:30:06 UTC
	Don't be mislead by the Boinc 'measurements'... The Boinc benchmarks and credits have been a long long story of controversy and confusion... Happy fast crunchin', Martin ____________ Mandriva Linux A user friendly OS! See new freedom Mageia2 The Future is what We make IT (GPLv3)
	ID: 1273402 ·

HAL9000 Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 11 Sep 99 Posts: 3278 Credit: 76,712,087 RAC: 77,171	Message 1273479 - Posted: 20 Aug 2012, 19:46:50 UTC
	I let BOINC run it's initial benchmark. Then I set the values to what they should be in the client_state.xml. After that I run BOINC with the skip cpu benchmarks command. I found in testing that different versions of BOINC will generate drastically different numbers. I think they use the same random number generator as they do in the credit granted code. ____________ SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours Join the BP6/VP6 User Group today!
	ID: 1273479 ·

WinterKnight Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 6801 Credit: 17,102,510 RAC: 27,926	Message 1273482 - Posted: 20 Aug 2012, 19:51:37 UTC
	The differences in benchmark numbers has been under discusion since, at least, msg 1819 25 Jun 2004 \| 11:13:14 UTC.
	ID: 1273482 ·

Todd Madson Send message Joined: 4 Aug 99 Posts: 55 Credit: 15,890,153 RAC: 10,226	Message 1273967 - Posted: 22 Aug 2012, 14:43:44 UTC
	Given that the windows side is the only side that currently allows video card crunching you would think it would actually provide better overall statistics. Thinking, thinking... ____________
	ID: 1273967 ·

BilBg Send message Joined: 27 May 07 Posts: 2021 Credit: 3,027,755 RAC: 6,570	Message 1274203 - Posted: 23 Aug 2012, 3:40:23 UTC - in response to Message 1273967. Last modified: 23 Aug 2012, 4:04:09 UTC
	Given that the windows side is the only side that currently allows video card crunching you would think it would actually provide better overall statistics. Thinking, thinking... Thinking?? What "overall statistics"? Benchmarks are done by boinc.exe They are done only on the CPU BOINC do not know how to compute on GPU (= no code in boinc.exe to do GPU Benchmarks) And any external process (program) that is using the CPU at the time of Benchmarks affects the values. E.g. start compressing some big file/folder (WinRAR, 7-Zip, ...) (since you have many CPU cores you may need to start several WinRAR, I'm not sure how many cores it uses for a single process), [you may also just start WinRAR, press Alt+B (= WinRAR Benchmarks), select 'Multithreading'] [in 7-Zip it is Tools -> Benchmark, select 'Number of CPU threads:' to match your CPU] Run the BOINC Benchmarks (from menu), See the values. ____________ - ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
	ID: 1274203 ·

Todd Madson Send message Joined: 4 Aug 99 Posts: 55 Credit: 15,890,153 RAC: 10,226	Message 1274554 - Posted: 23 Aug 2012, 20:29:54 UTC
	Statistics was probably the wrong work for it. I meant "more overall work produced". I was referring to the fact that if I run my system under windows I get: -8 Seti @ Home work units being crunched simultaneously plus -1 Milkyway @ Home work unit crunched. Versus MacOS side: -8 Seti @ Home work units being crunched simultaneously. Period. Mainly because to my knowledge there is no Boinc add-ons at this time to allow video card crunching on the Mac side. Yet. I haven't tried astropulse v6 workunits yet but it crunches a workunit for milkyway in 4-7 minutes(!) per workunit versus a couple hours on the actual CPU or on the i7 laptop I have that has a nvidia video card in it (and the cuda algorithm isn't as fast as that ATI card even though it's faster than the cpu as well). ____________
	ID: 1274554 ·

arkayn Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 14 May 99 Posts: 3088 Credit: 40,266,650 RAC: 65,576	Message 1274581 - Posted: 23 Aug 2012, 21:30:21 UTC - in response to Message 1274554.
	I know Collatz has a OpenCL app for OSX as well as a Cuda app. ____________
	ID: 1274581 ·

Message boards : Number crunching : Interesting difference on my hardware between operating systems.